Monster - Pencils

These are the pencils for the Monster illustration, I got some Col-Erase light blue pencils for my birthday and decided to try them out. From what I can gather they're pretty much the standard pencil for animators. They're really nice to draw with and I can see why animators love them so. For some reason the shade of blue came out incredibly lurid when I scanned them in so I tweaked them a little to resemble the original a bit more.

Illustration Friday: Monster

Sorry, but I think the topic has changed to Spring as I was posting to the Illustration Friday site, this was done for the previous topic. I was trying to get this finished before the topic changed and was in a hurry and didn't notice. This is the first Illustration Friday I've taken part in. I was running a bit late because I was working on some typical monster stuff for the illo and then realised I wanted to push myself a little and not do a typical monster (as much fun as that may have been). I figured that the scariest monsters are usually the ones that you can't see and this is what I came up with instead.

Pootling

Just some more pootling about on the 'puter. Seems to be some sort of pointing thing going on, dunno what that's about.

ICA Wallcomic

I've just added a comic strip to my site, it was part of a large project for the ICA that many cartoonists were involved with. Click here to take a look.

Euros Childs

I went with my girlfriend, Sarah, to see Euros Childs live at Bush Hall on Saturday. He's the lead singer and songwriter from Gorky's Zygotic Monkey and has just put out a solo album called "Chops". I was a bit worried about how good it was going to be, the album has a rather DIY sound and doesn't have the richness and warmth of genuine instruments being played, which is one of the things that make Gorky's so good. Thankfully, there was a proper band playing with him that sounded absolutely great and they really made the album shine. Bush Hall is a pretty little venue although the photos on the site don't really indicate quite how small it is. Euros still looks like he's only fourteen years old and he probably always will with his adolescent physique and his teeny, tiny head which is often obscured by his floppy hair. His small head makes his neck look rather large and wide and I figured he was interesting looking enough to try and draw. Not so sure about the chop, I liked the idea of it replacing the old cartoon cliché lightbulb but I ain't so sure it works. The colouring is a bit slapdash but I wanted to keep it fairly fresh and not overwork it. I might have over-exaggerated the amount of hair but it's what stands out most when he's playing live and shaking his head a lot.

Digital tomfoolery

I've been footling about doing some digital doodling today, just for fun.

Middle Aged Food

As promised (although a bit later than planned), here's some more of the Middle Ages food spots. I think these came out quite well, they're fairly solid Horrible Histories work and I can look at them without cringing (too much). I tend to prefer working on something more character based than an image that relies on scene-setting very heavily. That's not necessarily an admirable trait but it's definitely where my interests lie. Despite being supplied with some reference for each illustration and usually searching for additional material myself, I always felt it was hard to do justice to the period in the time allotted and that I was drawing with only a minor knowledge of time and place. It probably didn't matter too much as it's all very cartoonish but I like to feel I'm working with a bit more understanding of the material than I usually had whilst working on Horrible History. I confess that despite having drawn all this history based work my knowledge of the subject hasn't improved much if at all.

Website Update

Just a quick post to mention that I've updated www.fazchoudhury.com, I've added the Horrible Histories double-page spreads that I did. More stuff for the blog soon, honest...

Look out! Jelly coming!

I’ve been working on some illustrations for the Horrible Science magazine and haven’t been posting to the blog of late, I'll try to make up for it. Here’s another Horrible Histories spot illustration, it’s titled Bishop’s Feast but I don’t recall what the story is behind it, a common problem seeing as I've done a fair amount of them. I guess Bishop’s had jelly on some special occasion although I can’t understand why they’d have it without ice-cream! Where’s the fun in that? Is it just me or does this picture seem ever so slightly icky? Something to do with the look on the bishop's face I reckon. Maybe it's not just the jelly he's pleased to see...

This was one of a few spots on food in the Middle Ages, I’ll probably post some more of them soon.